On Friday, for the first Dublin Culture Night, 40 of the capital's museums, galleries and theatres will host free events, to show off their best sides. Gemma Tipton asks an assortment of people for their favourite city haunts.
FIONN DAVENPORT
Author of Lonely Planet: Dublin
Dublin is a city of interiors and of experiences. Apart from those rare sunny days in the parks, we're at our best indoors, in pubs, cafes and restaurants. Even though it's a cliche, it's true. Every tourist I've spoken to, every survey I've read, puts the social experience as the number-one thing people get out of a visit to Dublin. We have our galleries and museums, but they're not on a par with those in the other great cities of the world. Nonetheless, Dublin remains, for its size, an incredibly popular destination. I like to emphasise things that are special to Dublin or portray a uniquely Irish experience, so the GAA Museum (left), at Croke Park, is a wonderful insight into a particularly Irish pastime that is woven into the fabric of the country. I am also a big fan of the free tour you can take, on Wednesdays and Fridays, of Glasnevin Cemetery - again, something very particular to us. But my favourite place of all, and the one museum that bucks the trend of unspectacular collections, is the Chester Beatty Library, which may have very little Irish in it but remains a distinctive collection that is not just incredibly beautiful but of worldwide importance, too.
PATRICK CHAPMAN
Poet and short-story writer
Poetry readings are among my favourite things to do in Dublin - either giving one or being in the audience. Recently, in the Irish Writers' Centre - a wonderful, atmospheric, light-filled space perfect
for such events - Kevin Higgins, Ben Howard and others each read a few poems, this jukebox-like variety giving the full house a refreshing sampler of different voices. Earlier in the summer, in Damer Hall, another great venue, on St Stephen's Green, Heather Brett and Mark Granier unveiled work from their respective collections to an appreciative audience. Both venues are regulars in the poetry calendar, but there are also weekly readings happening all over, in pubs, cafes and galleries. When the poet's voice on the page and in the air really come together, you've got a moment that, no matter how often it is repeated, is never the same twice.
Patrick Chapman's third poetry collection and first book of stories will appear next year. www.patrickchapman.net
TANYA KIANG
Director, Gallery of Photography
One of my favourite things to do in Dublin is to take the out past Killiney Bay. The view is incredible, and even though I make the trip every day, coming home from work, I never tire of it. Of similar perennial appeal is the Natural History Museum (left): it's dusty and quirky and just like a museum should be. I also like to stop by some of the newer exhibition spaces, like the or Four Gallery, on the way to Imma, which always has something worth seeing. Then it's the Luas back towards Moore Street for dim sum in one of the Chinese restaurants there. Round off the day by stocking up on fab Italian food at deli, off Ormond Quay, run by Paolo, who also exhibits some of his own photographs there.
MIA GALLAGHER Novelist
The Treasury Building, the office block developed by Treasury Holdings, straddles Lower Grand Canal Street with brutal grace. Dull purple brick. Long blue horizontal windows on the street side. Even longer vertical ones, navy glass, cascading down the canal-facing entrance. Reminds me of many things: a 1930s cruise ship, a set from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a big European beast of a thing that would fit, no bother, on one of Glasgow's magnificent, neglected redstone streets. Through the glass front, glimpses of falling green. At night in the mid-1990s, before the boom had cut its baby teeth, when people still dreamed of hangover-curing fries in Kitty O'Shea's, when the docks were still empty, the wind would come rushing up past the Macken Street flats, smelling of the river. Desolate and calm. A good place to be in the moonlight. Watch Rowan Gillespie's naked woman (above) creeping up the wall, looking down . . . just in case.
Mia Gallagher's first novel, HellFire, has just been published by Penguin Ireland, £12.99 in UK
JOY GERRARD Artist
The Douglas Hyde Gallery, in Trinity College, is one of my favourite cultural spaces, as it is a concentrated and contemplative space for looking at art works. I may not appreciate every exhibit, but the gallery lends itself to a real focus on the work. I love previewing what's on show at the entrance level, then descending into the central space, to see the main exhibition. I also like the tiny Paradise Space, a tiny white box tucked to one side of the gallery; it's always interestingly curated.
Joy Gerrard is completing a major sculpture for Galway City Museum